Network modelling, citizen science and targeted interventions to predict, monitor and reverse bee decline

Abstract

Societal Impact Statement The global decline in pollinating insect populations has rightly received widespread news coverage as it imperils ecosystem function and human food security. Reversing and addressing this decline is an urgent global priority. However, in many locations we do not know what species are present, how large or small species populations are, or what types of specific resources the populations require. By adopting novel network analyses approaches and by working with monitoring programs, such as Oxford Plan Bee, we may be able to dramatically improve our ability to predict species extinctions and facilitate targeted conservation action to maintain abundant, diverse and stable pollinator communities. Summary Pollination is fundamentally important to ecosystem function and human food security. Recent reports of dramatic insect declines, and pollinator decline in particular, have increased public awareness and political motivation to act to protect pollinators. This article maps commonly proposed management interventions onto known drivers of bee decline, and identifies forage and nest site provision as a tractable management intervention that can simultaneously address multiple drivers of decline. However, it is recognized that there are gaps in the knowledge of exactly how much and which types of forage resources are necessary to support wild pollinator populations. A novel network analysis approach based on quantified floral resources and pollination services is proposed, which would illuminate the types and quantities of floral resources and pollinators necessary to maintain a diverse and abundant plant–pollinator community. The approach would also facilitate the prediction of species extinctions in plant–pollinator communities and help target conservation interventions. Finally, Oxford Plan Bee is introduced as a new, citizen‐science‐based project to monitor solitary bee populations, and provide empirical data to validate predictions from the proposed network approach. The over‐arching aim of the described network analysis approach and the Oxford Plan Bee project is to facilitate effective, evidence‐based conservation action to protect pollinators and the plants they pollinate into the future.

Dispersal patterns of an introduced wild bee, Megachile sculpturalis Smith, 1853 (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) in European alpine countries

“…Those benefits contribute to the popularity of citizen science projects (CSP) reflected by countless research topics published within the last years [5][6][7]. Although insects in general potentially evoke negative perceptions in humans [8,9], pollinators like bumble bees and butterflies are attractive groups for CSP [10][11][12][13][14][15]. Most CSP focus on creating data sets of species distribution records [3], which constitute the baseline of abundance studies [16][17][18][19].…”

Discovering the wild side of urban plants through public engagement

“…In landscape architecture terms such as third landscape (Clément, 2014) or intermediate landscape (or intermediate nature; Desvigne, 2009) are used for such abandoned interstitial land. Urban wastelands have been a focus of urban botany early on (Lachmund, 2003). Through their often relatively large size and lack of use, they often harbor rare and relatively large-sized wild species, and they are wild in the sense that natural processes such as colonization, succession, and disturbance regimes are not (or only weakly) shaped through deliberate human intervention.…”

The Strategic Use of Multimedia in the Great Georgia Pollinator Census Citizen Science Project

“…They struggle with insect identification and cannot differentiate between a pest insect and a beneficial one. Research done by Lander (2020) showed how these types of projects could impact participants in behavioral and cognitive ways. They learn as they participate, and as a result their behavior changes to reflect what they learn.…”